Page 16 of Bribed & Bred By The BRATVA (Bred By The BRATVA #9)
The call comes just after dusk. Roman’s voice on the other end is clipped, irritated. A meeting soured, a deal gone sideways. He could handle it himself, but he wants my presence.
I don’t hesitate. Isabella is warm in my bed, her skin still damp from the bath, her body tender from taking me twice already. But when duty calls, I answer.
“Stay here,” I tell her, pressing a kiss to her temple. “I won’t be long.”
Her eyes are wide, searching mine. “Be careful.”
The words slip under my skin like a blade. No one tells me that. No one cares enough to. But she does.
I leave before I can say something dangerous.
The meeting is in one of our warehouses, the air thick with oil and rust. Roman stands with arms folded, jaw tight, Nikolai flanking him like a shadow. The men across the table are too young, too stupid, thinking they can bluff us.
It takes less than ten minutes before knives flash. One grazes my ribs when I step in, my fist answering before the man can blink. His jaw cracks under my knuckles. He goes down spitting blood, and the others scatter like rats.
By the time it’s over, Roman is cursing about wasted time, Nikolai is laughing, and my hand is raw, skin split across the knuckles. A shallow cut burns along my side where I dodged too late.
I don’t bother bandaging it. Pain sharpens me. It reminds me I’m alive.
When I walk back into the house, the lights are low, the air scented faintly of freesias. Isabella is waiting in the sitting room, curled on the couch with a blanket. She looks up, relief flooding her face, until she sees the blood.
She’s on her feet in an instant. “Aleksei—”
Her hands are small and frantic, lifting arm, stroking my face, tugging me down to the couch. “You’re hurt.”
“It’s nothing,” I say. “Superficial.”
She ignores me, fetching a cloth from the bathroom, pressing it gently to my side. Her touch is feather-light, careful. It burns worse than the knife because it makes me want to sink into her softness and never climb out.
“You’re bleeding,” she whispers, voice trembling.
“I’ve bled before.”
“That doesn’t make it less terrifying.”
She undoes my shirt quickly, pushes that and my jacket off my shoulders and down my arms.
Her hands shake as she wipes the cut clean, her lip caught between her teeth. The sight of her tending me, fussing over me, nearly undoes me. I could kill a dozen men and come home to her touch, and it would always feel like salvation.
I catch her wrist, stilling her. “Isabella. Look at me.”
Her eyes lift, wide and wet.
“There is very little danger,” I say, steady. “We are not at the bottom fighting for scraps. We are at the top of the food chain. If someone lunges with a knife, it’s because they’ve already lost.”
She shakes her head, pressing harder on the cloth against my side. “You make it sound so simple.”
“It is simple. I decide who breathes. I decide who doesn’t. That’s power. And power means safety. For me. For you. For Mateo.”
Her throat works. She leans closer, her hair brushing my arm. “But what if—”
“There is no what if,” I cut in, rougher than I mean to. I soften it by brushing her hair back, letting my hand linger against her cheek. “Do you think I would let anything happen that would take me from you? From the life I’ve just begun to build?”
Her breath shudders out, and she shakes her head slowly. “No.”
“Good.” I press a kiss to her forehead, then another lower, to her mouth. She yields instantly, lips trembling under mine, and I taste the salt of her worry.
When I pull back, I murmur, “I want you to get used to this. Blood on my hands. Cuts on my skin. They mean nothing. What matters is that I come home. Always. To you.”
Her hand cups my jaw, thumb grazing the cut. “And you’ll always come back?”
“Yes.” The promise is easy, because it’s true. “Always.”
Her shoulders slump, tension draining out of her.
“Hold this,” she says, placing my bruised and bloodied hand over the cloth on my side. She returns minutes later with the first aid box from beneath the sink in the bathroom.
She gently places sticky strips over the cut, holding my skin together before placing a bigger bandage over it. Then she cleans my knuckles, alternately kissing and blowing on them before dabbing on ointment and massaging it gently over the grazes.
When she is finished, she curls against me, small but fierce, and I hold her there, my bruised hand stroking down her spine.
For the first time in years, I feel something like peace, not because the violence stopped, but because I came back to her, and she’s here, seeing me, caring for me.
It’s dangerous, how much I already need it. How much I already need her.